RE: Creating Demand for STEEM Power: Vote Negation
I feel like a vote negation system like this is hard to explain and seems convoluted. I'd simply like to see a down vote option, that most are familiar with due to Youtube. I'd suggest it behave like an up vote but in reverse, with the added parameter that it not influence reputation. A flag should be reserved for plagiarism, harassment, identity theft, spam, etc. A down vote would express disapproval of certain content or it's rewards without disapproving of the content creator.
A standing vote negation order would essentially be like a flagging bot. I think it's unfair to disapprove of content without reviewing it. In the example above, Alice may up vote 85% non chicken articles. I don't want to be set to auto negate post rewards given to quality content. Any kind of negative action should be structured to be inherently manual. Cheetah pouncing relentlessly on plagiarists and identity thieves being an exception I'll grant!
You already have one. You just don't see it because they call it a flag.
I think what would actually happen is Bob negates Alice, and she chills. And Bob removes the negation before the week is up.
Whereas, a downvote/flag scenario will perhaps cause a chill, Alice might just switch to a different time of day to do her curation, hoping Bob is asleep (and hoping he doesn't go as far as to set up a downvote/flag bot).
Posts are open for voting for at least 24 hours so that won't work.
Voting bots are readily available such as the steemvoter service, and others can be created.
To me this strikes me as a solution in search of a problem, and one that potentially causes all sorts of conflicts and perception problems that may well exceed its utility.
If negative autovoting bots became widespread then it could be seen as an optimization. But it isn't even clear whether a simplistic "negative vote every vote by this user" would express the desires of voters anyway. What about "negative vote every vote by this user, except these sorts of posts, where I agree with the upvotes". Or negative voting only on downvotes (or only certain ones) but not upvotes. All of these and more can easily be expressed with scripts/bots, but not with a direct negative vote. And in all cases, this equally incentivizes buying more SP in order to increase influence.
It is just not clear to me that a blanket negative vote is a use case that would actually have significant use, and if not then it is more trouble then it is worth.
Another consideration is, would this vote negation even have any noticeable effect, or would it just add overall negativity to the platform!
For a simplified example, lets say that Bob and Alice are the only two voting, and as described they have roughly equal stake. Alice votes on chickens and Bob votes on what he deems worthy. The rewards pool will be split 50/50 between the two topics. Now if Bob sacrifices some of his power to block Alice... it's a wash. He cuts her power by 50%, cutting his own by 50% in the process. Now when they vote again the next day... the pool is still split 50/50.
I don't see how vote negation does anything more than the simple strategy of voting on what you like... and not voting on what you don't.